Honor View 10 review: Hands on with the £449 OnePlus 5T rival

Honor launched its latest flagship phone, the Honor 9, in July 2017. This incredible phone went head to head with the OnePlus 5, and narrowly lost out to its rival in two key areas: its camera and battery performance. Since then, both OnePlus and Honor have launched 18:9 flagship phones, replacing their previous iterations with the 5T and View 10 respectively. Both cost £449, so which one is the best?

Honor View 10 build quality and design

Holding the phone, I noticed how thin it felt in my hand – it’s incredibly thin at only 6.97mm. The large 6in 18:9 LTPS IPS display is the star of the show. With a small bezel, the curved sides are reminiscent of the Samsung Galaxy S8.

On the whole, Honor has stuck with the design of the Honor 8 Pro, ditching the glass back that was found on the Honor 8 and 9. I prefer this, as the View 10 is much less prone to attracting fingerprints. It’s available in two colours: Navy Blue, which is Honor’s signature colour, and Midnight Black.

The fingerprint sensor squeezes its way onto the front and can be found nestled underneath the display. Personally, I prefer a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor, but each to their own. Swipe gestures make a return, as we’ve seen previously with both the Huawei P10 and P10 Plus, meaning there’s no need for capacitive on-screen buttons.

The 3.5mm jack has its rightful place at the bottom of the phone, a feature that’s inexplicably being removed by some manufacturers. It has a USB Type-C port, that has fast-charging capabilities, NFC and dual-SIM 4G LTE capabilities, too. A secondary SIM slot can be sacrificed for a microSD card, which expands the 128GB storage with support for an additional 256GB.

With such a slim design, it’s impressive to see a larger-capacity battery in the View 10. At 3,750mAh, it’s larger than the 3,300mAh battery found in its closest rival, the OnePlus 5T.

Honor View 10 performance and camera

During my brief time with the phone at the launch event, I found the View 10 to be snappy. It, therefore, came as no surprise to find that it comes with a 2.4GHz octa-core HiSilicon Kirin 970 processor and 6GB of RAM.

Both the similarly-equipped Huawei Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro provided near-identical performance to 2017’s Snapdragon 835 handsets, such as the OnePlus 5T and Samsung’s Galaxy S8, so it’s safe to assume that the Honor View 10 will have flagship performance – I’ll be sure to put it thoroughly through its paces when I review it.

The View 10 also ships with Android Oreo 8 and Huawei’s EMUI 8 overlay out of the box.

Honor has upped the ante with its cameras, too. On the rear, you’ll find a dual 16- and 20-megapixel cameras with an f1/.8 aperture and Phase Detection Auto Focus (PDAF) for fast autofocusing. A 13-megapixel camera can be spotted on the front with a f/2.0 aperture. If the OnePlus 5T is anything to go by, we’re all in for a treat.

Honor View 10 early verdict

Upon first impressions, Honor seems to have improved its flagship offering. Even though the View 10 has a lower-resolution selfie camera than the OnePlus 5T – and will only be available in a few select countries on 8 January 2018 – it could be worth waiting for the larger-capacity battery and front-mounted multifunctional fingerprint sensor.

So, if you’re looking to buy a new 18:9 phone, hold out for my full review of the Honor View 10 in the near future – it might just be the best sub-£500 OnePlus 5T killer we’ve been waiting for.